Schedutil Frequency Invariance Revised For Better Intel Performance + Power Efficiency

SUSE developer Giovanni Gherdovich has sent out the latest patches on supporting frequency invariance within the kernel's scheduler code and ultimately making use of it for select Intel CPUs to yield not only better raw performance but also power efficiency.

The code corrects the behavior in the Linux kernel's scheduler code around frequency behavior and can ultimately yield performance improvements in the double digits for select workloads while most often the optimal scenario is around 10% better performance and also performance-per-Watt gains. See Significant Performance & Perf-Per-Watt Gains Coming For Intel CPUs On Linux Schedutil for more background on this work.

The Linux kernel patches in their current form enable frequency invariance support for Intel Skylake X CPUs as well as Xeon Phi, Atom, and Atom Goldmont parts.

More details within this v5 patch series. But given the timing of this latest iteration to the patches, it's looking increasingly less likely the work would be reviewed and queued ahead of the Linux 5.5 merge window opening now in one week. So more than likely it's not coming until Linux 5.6+ in 2020.